From the “Middle Georgia Progress.”
One week ago yesterday morning woe folded her dark and gloomy pinions and settled over our fair and sunny Southland! He, who by his love for us, by his incessant labor for the advancement of our material progress, whose voice was raised to dispel the shadows of hate and prejudice, and bring the North and South into a closer union, whose heart was filled with charity, and whose hands were ever performing deeds of kindness, the eloquent and gifted Grady—the knightly and chivalrous leader of the peaceful hosts of the New South—was called to a brighter home in the skies, where all is peace and joy and supernal bliss. The whole South laments his death “and may his soul rest in peace” is the sentiment of every heart. His virtues are sung in sweetest song, and his worth proclaimed by lips tremulous with emotion. Young in years, but matured in wisdom, he grappled the great question that affected his people, and with matchless eloquence presented their cause on New England soil and told of their loyalty and love, still cherishing and remembering the traditions of the past. His death everywhere is recognized as a national calamity. Every public utterance and every public appearance, whether in New York, Boston, Texas or on his native soil, amid “the red old hills of Georgia,” has been greeted with applause and demonstrations of delight. Made fatherless in youth by the cruel ravage of war, he struck out with a stout heart and strong hands for success—how well he achieved it, the praises showered upon him from every quarter forcibly demonstrate the fact! Who has not felt the warmth of his sunny nature?—it glows in every stroke of his pen, and shines in all his eloquent utterances, and brightens his memory as his name and triumphs pass into history. Mr. Grady, by his pen and eloquence, has done more for the South than any other of her sons, and their love and appreciation is attested in their universal sorrow. His gifts were rare, his eloquence wonderful, and he bore in honor and peace the standard of his people, and they will ever keep his memory fresh and green.
HIS CAREER.
From the “Dalton Citizen.”
Only a few short weeks ago Hon. Henry W. Grady left his Atlanta home to electrify a critical audience in Boston, Mass., with one of his inimitable speeches. Through all the papers of the country the fame of this magnificent address went ringing, and ere the speech itself was printed, in full, the orator from whose lips it fell was stricken with a fatal disease on his return homeward. In little more than a week his life’s sands had run their course, and in the flush of a glorious and useful manhood Henry Grady lay dead, while his eulogies were on the lips of the whole nation. There has been much written by friends (he had no foes) in the newspaper world concerning this great loss; but it is all summed up in the words, “Henry Grady is dead!”
Somewhere, in an English poet’s writings, we find a pregnant little sentence: “I stood beside the grave of one who blazed the comet of a season.” The career of Henry Grady has been likened by several speakers and writers to a star burning brightly in the national and journalistic sky, but its light quenched in the darkness of death ere it reached its zenith. Fittest, it seems to us, is the simile quoted previously. A comet trailing its brilliant light across the darkening heavens, a spectacle focussing the gaze of millions of eyes, causing other stars to sink into insignificance by reason of its greater glow and grandeur.—Then, while the interest concerning its movements has reached its intensity, its gleaming light fades, and presently the sky is merely glittering again with the myriad stars, for the flash and the blaze of the comet have disappeared forever and it is invisible to mortal eyes. The question is, will another take its place, and when?—We think not soon. Even should an orator, whose eloquence might sway multitudes, rise to reign in the dead hero’s stead, it is more than probable that he would not combine with his oratory the wonderful statistical knowledge possessed by Mr. Grady, whose solid reasoning was only exceeded by the winsome touch, creeping in here and there, of the true artistic nature. He spoke in his last address of the South’s vast resources—of its “cotton whitening by night beneath the stars, and by day the wheat locking the sunshine in its bearded sheaf.” A practical argument at one turn and a beautifully rounded sentence at another.
These things made up the speeches that held so many in breathless attention, augmented by his magnetic personality. It would be well for our Southland could another as gifted shine forth in like splendor.